Nerdy linguistics discussion on tumblr

[snowgall]

Yesterday I got into a lively discussion with another tumblr user on the proper interpretation of one of Bucky's lines in Captain America: The First Avenger.

The line in question goes like this:

“Hell, no. That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight, I’m following him.”

Comments

[khalulu]

Thanks for inviting me

[snowgall]

Thanks for the contribution! Intuitions on the meanings of sentences like these can be really tricky. One of the linguists I consulted on this at first felt like she agreed with the OP, but then after discussing it with me for a while came around to the interpretation that I had! (And I wasn't pushing her :)

As for the example you gave, my interpretation is that "you don't have to Y" That both are optional. I'm not sure I'm up to doing the lambda calculus on that one!

And here's another mind-blower: if I say "More people have been to Russia than I have," this sounds like a grammatical sentence, and you might even think you know what it means, but if you really think about it, it means nothing at all. \o/

[pauraque]

There have been some great posts on Language Log about constructions like this. I think "too stupid not to..." was specifically discussed in one a few months back. It generated some good discussion about how difficult it was even for linguists to notice that their instinctive interpretations of these constructions were illogical (though sometimes pragmatically correct in that they did lead to the speaker's intended meaning).

Unfortunately I'm on my way out the door and I couldn't immediately find the particular post I was thinking of, though a search for "too stupid not to" turned up another one from a few years ago.

[snowgall]

Thanks for the link! I did think that someone else must have discussed this phenomenon before :) I just now read the blog post, but haven't had time to read all the other references and posts linked by it.

As far as the blog post goes, they pretty much do the same thing I did - describe the phenomenon but not explain it. (Not that I can explain it either!)

The only thing we can say with confidence is that these constructions are tricky to parse and many people have differing opinions as to what the "right" interpretation is!

:)

[lokifan]

Yay descriptivism! I absolutely think it makes sense, and even if it didn't the context tells us what it means.

[ext_5088637]

I read all your Who Wants to be a Millionaire cases and found an error.

You said
In both scenarios, we can say, “He’s too dumb to pick mayonnaise,” even though it means something different in each case.

But in my opinion, the sentence means exactly the same in both case 1 and 2. The fact that Steve picked differnt answers in each case doesn't make difference in the meaning of the sentence.

In both cases, "He's too dumb to pick mayonnaise" means that he doesn't have enough intelligence to pick mayonnaise.
The only differnece is that
in case1, Steve's behavior supported the prediction
and in case2, his behavior was against it.

And it is much clearer with conjunctions.

Case 1 : He didn’t pick mayonnaise because he’s too dumb to pick mayonnaise.

Case 2 : He did pick mayonnaise even though he’s too dumb to pick mayonnaise